


Chasing Stupid 🎨

by murderlight



Category: BURN THE WITCH (Manga)
Genre: Balgo is a dumbass, Bonding, Bookstores, Bruno wants validation, Dragons, M/M, Obliviousness, Osushi wants love, Pre-Slash, always dragons, self-deprecation, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27364444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderlight/pseuds/murderlight
Summary: Doing a quick favour for Noel, Balgo runs into the one person in Reverse London he dearly wishes would forget he existed.Enraged and piqued with new interest, Bruno finds himself chasing after an irritant who seems intent on driving him bloody crazy.
Relationships: Bruno Bangnyfe/Balgo Ywain Parks
Comments: 38
Kudos: 206





	Chasing Stupid 🎨

**Author's Note:**

> Just thought it'd be nice to write, really 😅
> 
> Spoilers for chapter zero of the manga if you have only seen the anime. If you're so inclined, the story will cover the manga events rather than simply confuse the heck out of you. I hope!

It was supposed to be a quick trip to the bookstore. No rooftop jaunts, no screaming collisions into chimneysweeps, just an errand to get Noel’s book order and check out the tiny hentai section of the manga shelf at the back of the store. He wasn’t getting paid for going, after all.

Inside his pushed-back hood, Osushi made a squeaky little grumble and licked his cheek. So cute! Unbelievably cute! Just the most adorable thing he’d ever seen in his entire life! His breath smelled terrible but his heart was pure. Balgo knew in that instant he’d die for Osushi. He’d drop dead with a smile on his face. Osushi was _it_ —

The bell on the door rang as another patron entered the store. Balgo took one look and dropped to his knees like it was a hold up, crawling past the shelves to remain unseen.

Not that guy again. Balgo had met a lot of people in Reverse London since coming across, and most of them had been sort of friendly, but the one guy he didn’t want to ever see again was Bruno Bangnyfe. What was he even doing in a bookstore? He didn’t look like someone who read books. Maybe create a pyre and burn someone on top of them, but that was it. God, he had the worst luck! Attracting dragons was one thing, but that guy was too much to deal with.

With his back pressed desperately to the shelf end, Balgo tried to catch a glance to see what was going on.

“Hey old man, you got my order yet?” Arms crossed over his threatening t-shirt, wearing a totally threatening smirk and standing like an actual thug, Bruno tipped his head slightly and flashed his teeth like a predator. “Bangnyfe. Should be in the pile for Top of Horns.”

“Hmm, I don’t see that name,” the old guy said, sounding like a rusty hundred year-old gate. He moved like one too; it took him almost a minute to come back with a single paper-wrapped tome. “I do have one for Bongdyke though.”

“Bo—!” Clenching one fist and hunching over slightly, Bruno looked silently enraged. And, in Balgo’s opinion, entirely constipated. “That’s close enough. Give it to me.”

“Of course,” old-ass bookstore man said amiably. “Can I see your identification, Mister Bongdyke?”

Balgo couldn’t help it; he snorted quietly into his hands until tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. The look on Bruno’s face demanded it. That was the face of a guy trying not to destroy the entire store. Against his shoulder, Osushi yipped in agreement.

“I know that stupid dog noise,” Bruno said suddenly, and Balgo saw his life flash before his eyes. Ducking down hard, knuckling tears off his lashes, he darted back the way he’d come, trying to skirt up the furthest shelf and come back around towards the door.

To anyone who asked, Balgo would swear he almost made it home free. Grabbing the edge of the old wooden shelf, deciding that being a bit late to give Noel her book was just survival skills in action, Balgo rounded the corner and launched directly into Bruno’s pissed-off grip.

“Bastard,” Bruno ground out, shaking his shoulders. “Balgo fucking Parks. I knew it.”

“That’s not my middle name!” Balgo yelped, his heart hammering. Bruno just shook him again with the force of someone who wanted all of his lunch money. “C’mon, I didn’t do anything bad! Don’t frame me again!” On his shoulder, Osushi barked and for once didn’t sprout a single leathery dragon wing as a cool distraction to save him. Then again, maybe that was just survival skills in action, too. Balgo gulped as sharp blue eyes scanned from his barely combed blond hair down to his fraying sneakers, his mouth twisting in a sneer. The hands that let him go almost threw him back into the wall.

“Haven’t seen you causing trouble in a few weeks.” That horrible gaze landed on Balgo’s collared throat and lingered. “Those Pipers keeping a leash on you this whole time?”

“I—uh, guess so? I just go wherever Noel is.” Ah, Noel, perfectly beautiful in every way. From her unbothered level gaze and flowing raven’s wing hair, all the way to her bountiful boobs and pleated skirt, she was a goddess in green and red plaid. Balgo gave a goofy smile. “I’m here to pick up her book. Why’d that guy call you Bong—”

“Shut up!” Bruno hauled him back in by his thin leather collar. The streak of dyed hair falling over his forehead looked especially threatening. “Get your useless ass back to headquarters before I lose my temper.”

“Okay,” Balgo said, nodding rapidly. “I’m totally on my way, just as soon as you let me go.” For whatever reason, Bruno’s nostrils flared. Instead of letting him go, he surged in like a striking snake, head tilted and mouth sneering like some kind of gangster. Trying not to tremble or show fear—animals could sense it, all his dog books said so—Balgo just gulped back his quiet terror and settled his eyes on the very tip of Bruno’s nose. “Oh, I think you’re getting a pimple. Mine always start out as tiny pink dots like that, but before I know it!” He mimed an explosion with both hands. “Boom! Once I even stayed home sick from school because, wow, I wasn’t going to let anyone but Osushi and Shelby—” Freezing up, Balgo heard his own sentence run off the edge of a cliff. Gosh, that really had rolled right off his tongue, hadn’t it?

“Not going to finish your story?” Bruno jumped in, his eyes narrowed. With one hand, he touched the tip of his nose and scowled. “Yeah, why don’t you tell me all about that best friend of yours? Bet there’s more to that little story than Banx’s report told us.” Finally, blessedly, the fingers hooked under his collar let go, and Balgo could only laugh his dumbest laugh and slip around Bruno’s tense form, feeling stirred up and surprised at himself. Introspection wasn’t really something he was good at, or even acknowledged a lot of the time. But Balgo didn’t want to talk about Shelby, maybe ever.

“Well, bye!” Balgo said, not daring to look back. The book could definitely wait: the glass door to the outside world was in his reach!

“Hey, Parks.” Bruno sounded like he hadn’t taken a single step. “Your dog’s growing some pretty interesting wings right now.” Sure enough, Balgo had begun to feel the gentle breeze of small membraneous wings pushing air around behind his ear.

“Definitely time to go! See you later, Bangdyke!”

“Wait—”

But Balgo was already sprinting out the door and down the road as fast as his legs would take him. Maybe it was just his bad feelings about Shelby, but Noel and Ninny always said not to take the chance. _Run, run, run_ , they’d told him. Get away from people. Get away from everyone.

If it was another of those Märchen things, people might die if it tracked him down into the middle of the city. Images of the creaky old man crushed under his destroyed bookstore set Balgo’s heart pounding. He wasn’t used to doing this kind of thing alone!

Wide-eyed, he bolted blindly down the streets of Reverse London, looking for a park or something that wasn’t the network of old buildings and spindly twisting alleyways he’d found himself in. Breath burning in his chest, eyes tearing from the wind, Balgo wasn’t sure he recognised the area he was in. He had to keep running! Osushi’s wings weren’t fully transformed, which maybe meant he wasn’t in real danger yet. It also meant he couldn’t use him to fly away.

“I need to get off the streets, Osushi!” he wheezed, feeling his legs starting to hurt. “Wow, I shouldn’t have skipped so much P.E. in school to read comics. Find us a way out of here.” Osushi, pinnacle of intelligence and allegedly a terrifying Dark Dragon when he wanted to be, stuck his tongue in Balgo’s left ear. “All right then, we’re going that way!”

Together they only got about two more streets and one poorly maintained courtyard away before the shadow of large wings covered the ground where Balgo was running. Panicking, feeling like he was reaching the end of his stamina, he refused to look up and felt around in his sweatpants for his phone. Nothing! Had he left it behind again? That was so stupid! He was so damn _dumb_. Trying to hide, doing the absolute opposite of what Noel had told him to do, Balgo ran into the narrow network of streets between close-clustered flats stacked on top of each other. There must be shelter somewhere, and a phone he could use. There had to be.

His escape ended where all turns in his life had taken him so far: a dead-end alley that reeked of old garbage and urine.

“I—feel—like—I’m—dying,” Balgo panted, leaning over onto his knees. At least he couldn’t hear the dragon anymore. Hopefully Wing Bind would take care of it before it found him. Osushi had nothing to contribute to that, but he hadn’t flown away with him yet.

“You’re not dying until I _kill you_ ,” said Bruno Bangnyfe, sprinting down the alley towards him. He had a can of spray paint in each hand and actual homicide in his slitted eyes. He was breathing pretty hard. “Make one fucking move, try to escape on me again and one of these is going directly up your arse. Understand?”

“No,” Balgo said honestly, backing up against the mossy stone wall behind him. He was sweating from every pore in his skin. “Go kill it! Isn’t that what you do?”

“I’m not wasting Inks resources on a skink like that,” Bruno scoffed, holstering his paint somewhere behind him. “You’re unprotected right now, and Top of Horns wants you alive. Til that alert is quashed, I’m making sure you don’t take one damn step out of my sight.” Punctuating his awful news, Bruno scanned the alleyway from top to bottom. “She’s no Cinderella, but you’ve got some really shitty luck.” Spotting a bolted door, he kicked it with his full might. It popped open from the hinge side, clearly rusted to hell. Balgo watched with mounting dread as Bruno grabbed the door and pulled it the rest of the way off its hinges, resting it on the wall beside the doorway. “Come on. It’s just a storage room.”

“But this is trespassing,” Balgo said, definitely not wanting to go into the dark and dingy old room with the guy who’d wanted to kill him just to boost his reputation a couple of weeks back. “Can’t you just call Ninny and Noel?”

“Pipers don’t kill Dark Dragons, idiot. You want the Sabres for that.” When Balgo didn’t immediately follow, Bruno came back, grabbed Osushi one-handed from his hood and disappeared inside. “Besides, if I enlist Banx’s division and Squire finds out, she’ll find a way to suck half my budget into the Sabres. Word of advice, Balgo Parks: if you ever meet her, don’t piss her off. Someone like you should just go limp.”

Somewhere, a low boom like thunder rattled old windows and beat like a drum in Balgo’s ears, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. His nerve broke and he ran after poor little Osushi, who had been kidnapped by a barbarian wearing faux fur. At least Bruno was as selfish as he sounded; he wasn’t interested in killing them both. Not while he still needed to track down the rest of the fairy tale dragons.

The room didn’t have anything in it except for a few flattened cardboard boxes and a lot of dust. It didn’t even have a window. It was just a small, enclosed and filthy space that was now entirely covered from wall to wall in bright sigils of different colours. It stank like paint fumes and mould. Osushi was cradled like a football in the tuck of Bruno’s arm, his furry little muzzle happily panting. His wings were totally gone. Balgo gasped. A traitor! He grabbed his small, fluffy, adorable body back with a tearful gaze, holding him aloft.

“You’re supposed to love _me_ the most! Why do you always roll over for everyone else?” Osushi didn’t answer, just stared at him with his condemningly beady dark eyes. “Oh, you’re still the cutest. How can I stay mad at you? Look at you! You could eat my face in my sleep and I’d forgive you.” He hugged the small dog to his chest, breathing in his fluffy canine smell.

“You know that’s a Disguiser, don’t you? I hear you’ve got trouble spotting those.” Bruno dropped some cardboard to the exposed cement floor and sat on it against the wall. While Balgo had been staring at Osushi in adoration, he’d been painting something complicated around the open doorway in layered colours. It almost looked pretty, if it wasn’t almost certainly some kind of terrible curse. The whole room looked like a graffiti artist’s dream and smelled strongly enough for Balgo’s head to spin. So strongly that he didn’t really think twice when Bruno pulled down a second flattened box next to him for Balgo to sit on. He just went to it, barely noticing how Bruno placed himself on the side closest to the door. He tucked Osushi under his hoodie until his pointed little muzzle poked out the top.

“I know what he is,” Balgo insisted, hugging him close. “But Osushi doesn’t break out into his other form, and I’m not going to hate him just because of what he might do to me. He’s the only warning I’ve got that I’m about to die!” He received a warm lick under his chin for that. “See? That’s true friendship.”

“Friends are a liability. Trust the wrong person and you’re dead.”

Balgo screwed his face up. “Aren’t you lone wolf guys almost always wrong? You sound like Batman.”

“I’m not Batman,” Bruno snapped, giving him a sidelong glare. “I’m a Nightwing type. Batman’s an arsehole.”

“You’re going to need a tighter outfit if you want to be Nightwing,” Balgo smiled. “Or you could just paint yourself black and blue from the neck down. His latest design is crazy.” To add to the entire bizarre afternoon so far, Bruno snorted softly.

“Don’t think I’ve read a comic book for a few years now. No time.” Bruno shifted his shoulders against the wall, fingers rubbing together idly in his lap. “Plus the Inks would raise hell if they ever saw their director doing something like that.”

It took Balgo a moment to realise Bruno’s fingers were stained in rainbows of colour from all of his work. Racking his memory, he couldn’t even come up with exactly what that division did. Painting sigils to summon strange creatures was all that came to mind. And there had been that enormous blue dragon, plus all those goons who’d tried to haul him away that day at The Realist’s office, with their dumb Taurus tracksuits looking like a bunch of chavs trying to scam him.

“These things on the wall, are they for protection?” A terrifying thought occurred to Balgo. “Or are they like traps that explode if anything comes in?” Being kind of psychotic and scary, Bruno could easily be one of those ‘if I’m going down, I’m taking everyone with me’ types. But all he did was lift a stained finger and point at the door. The overlapping colours were mostly circular, with unfamiliar writing lining them.

“The one around the door is to hide the signature of a living dragon. I mostly use it to hide Rickenbacker if I’m ambushing something big, but it should work for someone like you too.” His sidelong glance in the dimness of the room was really blue. “Ten years in the presence of a Disguiser made you more dragon than human, after all. Tell me about Shelby.”

Balgo squeezed Osushi so tightly to his chest he nipped him in warning. All around him, the room was glowing softly with magical paint that would keep him out of sight from whatever dragon was in the area. Surely it would be over soon and he could just leave, go back to being happy and stupid and not have to think about things like Shelby’s human body unfurling like long black tape.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Balgo said, staring straight ahead at the wall. Something yellow was on it, reminding him of a happy sun. It didn’t make him feel happy. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“All right.” Bruno didn’t sound like anything at all. Balgo squeezed his eyes shut.

“We were seven years old, just abandoned garbage, and we didn’t want to go back to the foster house so we were playing on the new tracks.” Balgo could still smell the afternoon sun on the bright metal, its heat ribboning up in clear lines that cast smoky shadows on the ground. Shelby’s laughing face with its thick eyebrows all scrunched down suddenly turning to fear. Balgo went from happy to surprised as he was pushed face-first into the gravel, a surprise that quickly turned to anger. A child’s anger at being betrayed for no reason, not understanding the sight of the train roaring past in front of him.

And then the train was gone and Shelby had sat up, seven years old and stupid, wiping blood off his face and pressing something on the side of his head. Balgo knew now that it hadn’t really been Shelby, it had been the Disguiser that had quickly crawled inside his warm corpse, pushing his fractured and dented body back into shape. It had been a dragon that stared at him with bright, scared eyes and sniffled bravely, wanting to go home and eat something good for dinner. And Balgo, like a fool, hadn’t thought twice about a little boy surviving being hit by a train. They hadn’t told anyone. They’d never even mentioned it again. Stupid kids, and Balgo never grew out of it.

He told Bruno the whole story of that day and beyond, his knees pulled up and Osushi disarmingly asleep against his chest. Balgo wasn’t sure if he was harbouring negative feelings that something like him could absorb. Maybe he was just sick of hiding it. He still mourned a dragon that tried to kill him, a dragon Noel had killed first. Ten years and his best friend in all the world had been a dragon.

“Now I’m Dragonclad,” he finished, shrugging against the rough cement brick behind him. “It’s not even helpful! All I do is run around until something decides it wants to eat me. I’m not cool like Noel and Ninny. I’m not even cool like Macy. At least she’s got pink hair.” He looked over at Bruno’s blue-dyed streak. “Maybe I should colour mine.”

“Nah. Leave it.” Fingers reached towards Balgo’s face—no, not his face, to Osushi’s sleeping one nestled under his chin. Bruno touched him like he was petting a bear trap instead of a fluffy dog. Balgo couldn’t see if Osushi was upset by it, but no wings burst out under his hoodie. “Interesting story there. Did Shelby ever say why he spent ten years in one place, staying friends with one person? No offence, brat, but dragons don’t do that. It’s all dominance with them. Even ‘Backer killed two of his nestmates so he could get more milk, and that was in a Wing Bind breeding rookery. A wild Disguiser should’ve slipped into that corpse and disappeared the next day. Maybe hopped into a better one when it came along.” Bruno frowned down at Osushi, who hadn’t stirred. “What’ve _you_ got that those two wanted so badly they’d go against their nature?”

“Nothing! I’m useless,” Balgo insisted, scratching his neck sheepishly. “All I do is think about Noel and go to school, or tag along with the Pipers when they want me.” He swore he wasn’t being self-deprecating, just truthful. Stopping to listen for a moment, Balgo realised he couldn’t hear anything except faint traffic and the chirp of faraway birds. “Where’s that dragon?”

“Subdued about twenty minutes ago.” Pulling out a smartphone from his pocket, Bruno flashed him a text message from the Sabres that confirmed it. There had even been a news bulletin and everything. “It wasn’t anything special.”

“You wasted all your paint for nothing,” Balgo sighed before it hit him. “Twenty minutes ago? Why didn’t you say anything?” But Bruno only shrugged, using his hands to climb the wall until he stood, brushing himself off with precision.

“Can’t take the chance you might end up dead on my watch. Those Pipers need to take better—” He cut himself off so fast his teeth snapped shut. His sharp look dared Balgo to comment, like he’d even understood what the hell had just happened. “Anyway. Detour’s over, Parks. Don’t let me catch you wandering around unfamiliar places without a Wing Bind approved chaperone. And _don’t_ go making friends with strangers on your way home. Fifty pounds says it’s probably another bloody Disguiser.”

“Okay,” Balgo nodded, cradling Osushi. “I promise I’ll be safe. Thanks for…stuff. You didn’t even punch me.”

“Right.” Bruno took a step back, looking tense. “Good.” His mouth bracketed with harsh lines for exactly one second, fierce eyes darting at the walls. With a quick movement of his fingers, the paint was eroded from the bricks, dissolving into faint sparks of each bright colour. Hiding the evidence? But he’d broken a door. “We’re done here. Go the hell home.”

“You’re sort of in the doorway,” Balgo said helpfully. “Though, I don’t really know how to get home from here. Where am I?”

“For fu—” Again, Bruno cut himself off, fuming silently. “Tell me you have _one_ skill that can keep you alive without someone else carrying you.”

The earlier, quietly listening Bruno was gone. In his place was a tetchy, irritable and kind of mean guy who seemed to wish Balgo could evaporate on the spot. Had it been the Shelby stuff? Balgo secretly, very privately hoped not. Some of his first words on that topic had been confided to him. Which was probably yet another dumb thing to have done. He tried for his best smile and edged his way around Bruno’s tense form for the second time in as many hours.

“I’ll find my way, don’t worry! Osushi will want dinner soon, so if I take too long he’ll just sprout his wings again and—whoa!” A hand clamped on his wrist hard enough to cut off the circulation, dragging him out into the alley and down to the street. “Is this a kidnapping?”

“Shut up,” Bruno growled, sounding like he had a headache. “Just shut up about today in general. Nobody knows I was here, nobody knows you were here. We clear?”

“Sure,” Balgo replied immediately, with no idea what was happening. “I’m totally a vault. What are we doing?”

What they were doing was walking out into the open road, with a wide, flat space big enough for Bruno to summon his mount. The dragon he called Rickenbacker was huge, blue and had four fully functional wings. Balgo remembered one had been really tattered a while ago, but it only had faint white lines where Cinderella’s cuts had been. It looked at Balgo and Osushi like they might both be lunch.

“Get on,” Bruno said tersely, jumping up onto the dragon’s back. His face was impatient and expectant. Balgo took a quick step back.

“Ah, oh, I was just thinking of taking the bus? The totally safe bus that won’t eat me.”

“ _Get on._ ”

“Is this okay?” Balgo stage whispered to Rickenbacker’s giant blue head, hoping the answer wasn’t going to be sharp teeth and a sharper gulp. But the war mount just sniffed him deeply from head to foot, lingering on Osushi. Little fluffy adorable Osushi, who stirred and let out a single ‘ _arf!_ ’ that jolted Rickenbacker so hard Bruno almost slid off his back. Appalled reptillian eyes met his, and in a slinking bow, the dragon extended its wing like a red carpet to climb onto its back. “Oh, thanks! You’re a nice dragon.” Clambering up onto its back, Balgo looked at Bruno expectantly. “Can I hold your waist? I don’t have great balance.”

For some reason, Bruno looked really off-balance too, scanning between Rickenbacker, Osushi and Balgo’s smiling face like none of them made a lot of sense. Balgo understood; he felt like that a lot of the time too.

“Fine,” Bruno said, what felt like eons later, settling them both in. “Don’t do anything stupid like letting go.”

“I won’t!” Balgo promised, squeezing extra tight for punctuation. “I have a really good grip. I like hugs.”

“Never call this a hug.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“ _Ever_.”

“Okay!”

Finally taking to the sky in a surge of wings that generated a gust of air so strong Balgo pushed his face into Bruno’s fur collar and hung on for dear life, he felt his body turn tense for a third time and wondered if maybe Bruno was a little bit nervous around him, the way he was nervous around Noel. Balgo laughed at his own thoughts.

Now _that_ was stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, my first attempt 🙈 
> 
> If you enjoyed the fic, a kudos would be very appreciated! ✨


End file.
